I came across this website, which asks you to preserve what you consider humanity’s most important knowledge in one sentence. Examples include – F=Ma, No Such Thing as a Free Lunch, and the 3 Laws of Thermodynamics.

The postings lead me to the KEO website, where messages are accepted to be loaded on to a satellite that will crash back into the Earth in 50,000 years.

In their words:

The faraway children, of your children … of their great-grand children … who you would never know … would love to know you. What would you like to tell them?

I’d like to tell them this:

It is hard to put in to words the reflections and revelations I have had in my twenty (20) short years of life on this planet. I hardly remember half of them anyways. But I will try.Continue reading…

The measure passed by the Democrat-dominated legislature last month caps the state’s man-made greenhouse gas emissions. The most populous U.S. state seeks to reduce its emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, a cut of around 25 percent.

The Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 is also a direct challenge to the Bush administration, which has opposed mandatory caps to fight climate change, from a state that has often led the way nationally in new environmental standards.

This is one of the reasons why I love California. Schwarzenegger is a badass. I have a feeling that’s what some people say about Bush, but Arnold was an immigrant who came to America and actually DID STUFF. He was Mr. Olympia. He’s star red in huge blockbusters. Even if this isn’t the stuff that govenor’s should be made of, its a step up from drunkenly failing at life while Daddy pays the bills AND THEN becoming governor of Texas.

PS I read State of Fear by Michale Crighton. Very interesting. Will blog later.

Jeffery Sachs is a man with a plan. He wrote the book “The End of Pover ty” which I am going to buy today on Amazon. He is also the director of the Earth Institute in Columbia University and is a special advisor to Kofi Anan. You can read his wikipedia entry. Incredibly, there is no wikipedia entry for Sachs, so I started a short one. I’ll have to send you to his organization instead.

Anyways, the reason I am talking about him is because I stumbled upon a website supporting Sachs for President of the United States. One of their resources is an awesome pdf calledA Simple Plan to Save the World. It was written for Esquire Magazine, by Sachs himself. It’s informative, clear, and slightly liberal. But most importantly it is optimistic.

This whole saving the world business can get you down. I’d be the first to tell you. But reading this article made me feel hopeful and motivated to make a change more than ever. So check it out.

In America, there is a really strong mentality of “bigger is better”. It is a belief that if something is good, a bigger, larger, more powerful version of the same thing would be even better. think about super-sized fries, V-12 engines, Big Gulp, giant Gas grills, elaborate Christmas lights.

Is it a surprise that these things are also extremely damaging to our health and the environment? (And clearly what hurts the environment will hurt ourselves in the end.)

In the field of personal development, it has long been known, less is more. If you want to lose weight, eat less food and enjoy every bite. If you feel too busy, decline more social engagements and responsibilities and immerse yourself in every one. If you want to get organized, throw away junk stuff.

Environmentalism can be thought of as self-help for the planet. And the maxim “Less is More” is gold.

We can’t count on technology to save us. We can’t expect to continue living the way we have. Something has to change. We want to lift people out of poverty, but if then they start consuming as much as we (Americans) do, the planet is screwed. Something has to change.

Here’s what we have to do:

Use less.

turn off lights/switch off surge protectors when not in use

carpool, don’t drive unless you have to

Don’t buy something unless you’re sure you need it.

We all know these things, but the point here is: we need to rethink the way we interact with the world.

The country aims to replace all fossil fuels with renewables before climate change damages economies and growing oil scarcity leads to price rises.

According to the Guardian newspaper, a Swedish minister said oil dependency could be broken by 2020.

Damn. this is just freaking awesome. Sweden is recognizing the importance of getting off oil, and setting an ambitious deadline to quit. I’ve heard that for some people, the best way to quit an addiction, like smoking or oil, is cold turkey. It’s rough, but once it’s over, you’re so much better off. Props to Sweden.

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